Border cells

Decision-making occurring​ during navigation and learning is widely studied in choice behaviors, but less understood in natural and more continuous settings, especially under stress and uncertainty. This process could be investigated in rodent spatial navigation, which has been modeled with place-cell-based models. However, traditional models usually ignore detailed trajectories or kinematics. Here we extended a place cell-based reinforcement learning model to include detailed kinematics and used it to investigate the role of motivational stress. We performed experiments with two strains of mi

Pathological amyloid beta (Aβ) accumulation in the brain has been associated with poor cognitive performance and aberrant neuronal activity in preclinical mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Here, we assessed the impact of advanced Aβ pathology on spatial information processing in the medial entorhinal cortex (MEC) of 18-month APP NL-G-F knock-in mice as they explored contextually novel and familiar open field arenas in a two-day, four-session recording paradigm. Using in vivo electrophysiology, we tracked single-units across all sessions and found that MEC single-unit spatial informatio

…functions of the EC such as grid cells, border cells, speed cells or head-direction cells. These cell types have been characterized based on their firing properties, however, still lack a molecular profile. Similarly, detailed anatomical cell types have been described within the different EC layers, including ste

…is achieved through canonical feature cells like grid, object vector, head direction and border cells that are located in the superficial layers of MEC but their exact anatomical organization remains to be determined. Previous work has shown that the grid cell network consists of discrete modules of increasing scale along the dorsal-ventral axis of MEC. In addition, recent imaging studies have hinted at a clustering of grid cells towards the medial part of MEC. However, due to technical limitations f

Goal-directed navigation requires precise estimates of spatial relationships between current position and future goal, as well as planning of an associated route or action. While neurons in the hippocampal formation can represent the animal’s position and nearby trajectories, their role in determining the animal’s destination or action has been questioned. We thus hypothesize that brain regions outside the hippocampal formation may play complementary roles in navigation, particularly for guiding goal-directed behaviours based on the brain’s internal cognitive map. In this seminar, I will first

While various forms of cells have been found in relation to the hippocampus cognitive map and navigation system, how these cells are formed and what is read from them is still a mystery. In the current lecture I will talk about several projects which tackle these issues. First, I will show how the formation of border cells in the coginitive map is related to a coordinate transformation, second I will discuss the interaction between the reward system (VTA) and the hippocampus. Finally I will describe a project using place cells as a proxy for associative memory for assessing deficits in Alzheim

…these neurons are known as grid cells. However, although our world is three-dimensional (3D), the 3D volumetric representation in MEC remains unknown. Here we recorded MEC cells in freely-flying bats and found several classes of spatial neurons, including 3D border cells, 3D head-direction cells, and neurons with multiple 3D firing-fields. Man